A few years back, we wrote about the intriguing prospect of Nicolas Winding Refn teaming up with Harrison Ford for The Dying of the Light, a script by Paul Schrader. Sadly, that iteration of the project fell apart soon after when Ford decided to pull out, and Refn went on to make Drive instead. But now it’s back alive with a new team.

Schrader signed on last month to direct from his own script, with an unnamed “A-actor” in the lead. Now he’s revealed that the big-deal movie star in question is Nicolas Cage. Hit the jump to get details on the plot and more.

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There was a point where Nicolas Winding Refn was considering making a film called The Dying of the Light, about a CIA agent whose vision starts to fail while on a mission. Refn moved on to other projects, and won’t direct the movie, but he might still make it.

The project’s screenwriter is Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), whose micro-budget movie The Canyons has been generating a lot of talk for the past year. Now Schrader plans to direct The Dying of the Light later this year. He says Refn may still end up producing, and that they’ve got a major name nearly set to star. Read More »

I know it seems like we’ve had a lot of posts lately about Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, but that’s what happens when a guy who has been making interesting movies for several years starts to nose around studio films. He got attached to a lot of projects in short order, and now some of those naturally have to fall away.

Refn is next makingDrive, with Ryan Gosling, and that necessitates skipping out on a couple other films. He’ll no longer direct Keanu Reeves in Jekyll, nor will he be able to make The Dying of the Light, the Paul Schrader script that is to star Harrison Ford. Both of those films had sounded interesting, particularly the Schrader script, and it’s sad to see Refn have to drop them. Empire reports that timing was the issue for Jekyll and that “things fell apart” for The Dying of the Light.

Currently, the plan seems to be for Refn to make Drive and then move on to his wild-soundingWestern Only God Forgives, then a film set in Miami called I Walk with the Dead. Hopefully Only God Forgives, at least, will come to pass.

This might be the first Harrison Ford news that has piqued my interest in quite a while. In a recent interview, Ford says that he’s developing a film with Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Bronson, Valhalla Rising and the Pusher films. The director has a few different films on his slate, but of all of them The Dying of the Light, scripted by Paul Schrader, seems like it’s the one that Ford would be referring to. Reasons for that speculation, after the jump. Read More »

Jerry Bruckheimer has purchased the rights to Shake, a short story by Wanted co-writer Derek Haas. The short tale first appeared on Popcorn Fiction, a website created by Haas for screenwriters to show off short bites of hard-boiled fiction. The deal is reportedly in the seven-figure range, so what the hell is in there that makes Bruckheimer think it is worth a million-plus? Read More »